1. Field of Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of distributed systems. More particularly, this invention relates to self-organizing distributed systems.
2. Art Background
Control systems commonly include sensors and actuators and application controllers which are arranged to provide control of industrial and other applications. Such sensors may include temperature sensors, pressure sensors, tachometers, etc. Such actuators may include, valves, motors, heaters etc. Application controllers in such a control system may be implemented with programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or computer systems.
The sensors, actuators, and application controllers of a control system may be interconnected via a communication network. Such a communication network may be implemented with a packet-based communication network such as Ethernet or one or more of a variety of a field-level control buses which are specialized for the process control environment. A control system in which elements are interconnected via communication networks may be referred to as a distributed system or a distributed measurement and control system. The sensors and actuators and controllers are usually connected as nodes on the communication network. A node that includes one or more sensors or actuators or controllers may be referred to as a component node or as a component of the distributed control system.
Each component in a distributed system usually interacts with one or more of the other components via the communication network. For example, a particular component may gather data and transfer the data to selected other components. In addition, a particular component may perform computations and provide the results of computation to selected other components. As a consequence, each of the components is usually configured with the appropriate parameters that will enable it to communication with the appropriate ones of the other components in accordance with the overall design of an application.
Prior distributed systems usually undergo a commissioning process during which time each of the components are configured with appropriate parameters. During a typical commissioning process, a system installer manually enters the parameters into each individual component. Unfortunately, such manual entry operations are usually time consuming and expensive and greatly increases the cost of installing prior distributed control systems. Morever, such manual configuration is usually required when new components are added to the system, thereby adding to the cost of upgrading and maintaining existing systems.
In addition, such a commissioning process typically requires that large volumes of information regarding the communication properties and interaction protocols of the components be compiled and provided to the system installer so that the parameters for the individual components may be set properly. Unfortunately, the efforts required to compile installation information adds significantly to the cost of installation and slow the development of new systems.